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North Korea peace deal remains elusive

Despite the theatrics around Donald Trump's historic meeting with Kim Jong-un in Singapore in June, there were high hopes the summit signalled a breakthrough in the decades-long nuclear stand-off on the Korean Peninsula.

The world's media was saturated with images of the two leaders shaking hands in the first meeting between a sitting US president and a North Korean dictator. While there was little substance in a four-point peace plan released on the day, both men committed to end what is potentially the world's greatest security threat. Trump promised to end military exercises with South Korea in the first step towards ending differences between the two powers. Former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop called it a step in the right direction.

Prospects of a peace deal are already fading just months later. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's visit to Pyongyang has been called off, Trump is blaming China for antagonising its neighbour as payback for his trade tariffs, and Washington is talking about resuming military exercises with South Korea. Some analysts say the situation has actually got worse.

Prospects of a peace deal are already fading just months after the historic meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore. Evan Vucci

"The summit captured the world's attention. In terms of substance to come out of it, we don't have anything to show for it. Worse than that it's given North Korea a bit more breathing space on its [nuclear] programs," says Andrew O'Neil, professor of political science at Queensland's s Griffith University.

"Mike Pompeo's visit clearly showed the Americans were putting in some sort of effort to engage and, for awhile, the North Koreans seemed to be engaging too."

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"But as those discussions become pointed and the time came to commit, the North Koreans said we are not up for that."

Trump plays politics

History suggests this should not be a surprise. Kim's father, the late Kim Jong-Il, had a track record of dangling the denuclearisation carrot to the West but never delivering. Similar commitments to give up the country's nuclear arsenal in 1994 and 2005 never amounted to anything. However, there had been high hopes the younger Kim was on a different path – driven by a desire to open up the isolated country's economy in the way that China embraced a free market four decades earlier.

Trump blames China for any setbacks. "North Korea is under tremendous pressure from China because of our major trade disputes with the Chinese Government," Trump tweeted last week, not long after he abruptly cancelled Pompeo's visit. He also accused China of providing North Korea with "considerable aid".

China, which has accused the US President of playing politics with the North Korea issue, says Washington "should look at itself when it encounters difficulties on the issue". China's role in North Korea's future remains pivotal though and President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Pyongyang as early as next week.

Trump's suggestion Beijing is to blame for the impasse is dismissed by most analysts as political blustering ahead of the US mid-term elections as the US president ramps up the trade war rhetoric against China.

"China's implementation of the UN sanctions did play an important role in urging North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons. China has had a lot of co-operation with the international community on this issue. It is unreasonable to criticise China on the North Korea issue. This is Trump trying to use this to make sure he can win the mid-term election," Lu Chao, an expert in China-North Korea relations at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences told The Australian Financial Review.

O'Neil agrees: "This thesis that China has its hands up the back of a North Korean puppet doesn't pass the historical test."

There have also been mixed signals from Washington about the US promise to end military drills with South Korea. US Defence Secretary James Mattis indicated last week Washington was prepare to resume military drills between the US and South Korea. However, Trump appeared to hose down that suggestion in a tweet the following day when he said the drills were a waste of money.

"If the US restarts military exercises, the situation will deteriorate," said Yang Xiyu, an expert in Korean Peninsula affairs at the China Institute of International Studies – a research body under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "China has always maintained the problem should be solved through dialogue. In the US, the politicians theory is that it is not my fault and they want to use China as a scapegoat for the problem of North Korea."

He said the main obstacle is that the US and North Korea cannot agree on the pace of denuclearisation. The US wants North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme within one or two years.

More than 10,000 people poured into the nation's capital on the ninth day of protests over police brutality, but what awaited them was a city that no longer felt as if it was being occupied by its own country's military.